Crusader. Novel by Sara Douglass

“What? Oh … I, ah …” Goldman lapsed into silence, his eyes unfocused, then his mouth thinned and

his hands clenched on his knees.

“I loathe dead ends,” he said, and Faraday nodded. Goldman was ever the aggressive, determinedly

successful businessman.

“There is nothing worse,” Goldman said, and his eyes were now flinty and hard, “than walking

through the countryside and finding yourself in some dead end gully, and having to retrace your steps to

find another way forward. It’s so time wasting*. ”

“Non-productive,” Leagh said, understanding a little more the process they must all endure.

“Yes!” Goldman said, and he stood and paced about the dome. “Dead ends are so

frustrating! So pointless!”

Faraday watched him carefully. It seemed almost as if hate consumed Goldman, and she realised

that somewhere here was a deeper lesson they must all learn.

“So pointless,” Goldman said again, and then he vanished.

Goldman found himself standing before the infuriatingly calm — and very high and very steep —

rock wall of the canyon, and he raged.

He had walked hours to get to this point, put in effort and time that could have been spent

more profitably elsewhere.

He had walked and walked down this canyon, thinking it would lead him to a better life, more

money, and even, perhaps, a profounder understanding of life itself, and all it had presented him

with was a dead end, a rock wall, a point past which Goldman could not walk.

He raged. Was it possible to demolish the dead end? Perhaps a force of several hundred men

armed with pickaxes and shovels could clear it in a week or so. Perhaps a smaller force of men

armed with fire powder could destroy it in less time. Something had to be done to force this rock

wall to give way to Goldman’s needs and ambitions and …

… and Goldman quailed at the force of his rage. Why did he think such things? Why was he

so angry?

He was railing at a stand of rock, for the Field’s sake!

Goldman stared at the rock wall and wondered how best to combat his inner frustration and

anger.

You have walked to this rock wall, he thought, and thus there must needs be a purpose to this

dead end. What is it?

He sat down cross-legged on the ground and stared at the rock.

“What do you have to teach me?” he asked, and instantly all his frustration and hate fell

away and he felt a great joy fill him.

The rock absorbed the joy … and then it leaned forward and began to speak to Goldman in a

very earnest manner.

Goldman dusted off his tunic, and smiled at the four faces staring at him.

“Your turn,” he said to Gwendylyr.

She was in the garden, almost incandescent with fury.

How long had she tended that hedge? How many hours had she pruned and clipped? How

many days had she spent carefully digging in the soil about its roots to add light and air

and fertiliser?

And the hedge was so necessary! Its (once) neatly-clipped length had tidily divided field from

garden (and what a neat garden, with its carefully measured garden beds and precise rows of

stakes), providing the line that everyone needed between order and disorder.

But now disorder had invaded the garden.

Disorder in the form of a rigorous ivy. It had taken over the hedge, weaving and creeping its

way through the hedge’s dark interior spaces before bursting triumphantly through to wave long,

gleeful tendrils into the bright summer air down the length of the hedge.

The hedge was ruined! It was doubtless dying! How could it support the parasitic ivy and still

manage to keep —

Gwendylyr realised suddenly that she was very, very afraid. There was no dividing line

between order and disorder, was there? It was all a lie. Disorder would win every time. It could

never be kept at bay.

Gwendylyr backed slowly away, terrified that one of those tendrils would reach out and

snatch at her at any moment. Where could she hide? Was there anywhere to hide? Perhaps the

cellar … surely the dark would keep the ivy at bay … the dark would be safe… safe…

Gwendylyr stopped, appalled. She would hide herself in the dark the rest of her life to avoid

disorder?

Was that a life at all?

She swallowed, stepped forward, raised an arm, and took one of the waving tendrils gently in

her hand.

“Very pleased to make your acquaintance,” she said.

“Likewise, I am sure,” said the ivy, and the sun exploded and showered both hedge and ivy

and Gwendylyr in freedom.

“Leagh?” said Gwendylyr.

“No! No!” Leagh screamed, and grabbed at her belly.

It was completely flat. Barren.

As barren as the landscape about her. She ran, more than half-doubled over her empty belly,

through a plain of hot red pebbles. A dry wind blew in her face, whipping her hair about her eyes.

The sky was dull and grey, full of leaden dreams.

“No, no,” she whispered. She was trapped in a land that had stolen her child to feed its own

hopelessness. Both sky and ground were sterile, and both had trapped her.

“No.” Leagh sank to the ground, gasping in pain at the heat of the pebbles, and then

ignoring the burns to curl up in a ball.

Nothing was left. Best to just give up. Best to die.

Nothing worth living for.

She cried, her breath jerking up through her chest and throat in great gouts of misery. She

wanted to die. Why couldn’t she die? Wasn’t there anyone about who could help her to

die? Why couldn’t someone fust put a knife to her (hopelessly barren) belly and slide it in? The

pain would be nothing compared to this … this horror that surrounded her.

This desert. This barrenness.

Leagh cried harder, and grabbed at a handful of pebbles, loathing them with an intensity she

had never felt for anything or anyone before. She threw them viciously away from her, then

grabbed at another handful, throwing them away as well.

When she grabbed at her third handful she stopped, aghast at her actions.

Why blame the land for her misfortunes? If she had lost the child she carried, then how could

she blame this desert?

A cool breeze blew across and lifted the hair from her face.

A tiny rock squirrel inched across her hand, its tiny velvety nose investigating her palm for

food.

Leagh smiled, and then laughed as she felt a welcome heaviness in her belly. She

rested her hand over her stomach and felt the thudding of her child’s heart, then …

… then she gasped in wonder and scrabbled her other hand deep in among the pebbles about

her.

A heartbeat thudded out from the belly of the earth as well, and it matched —

beat for beat

— that of her child’s.

“What are you telling me?” she whispered, and then cried with utter rapture as the pebbles

explained it to her.

Leagh raised her head and stared at the others. A hand rested on her belly, and a strange, powerful light

shone from her eyes. “Faraday,” she said.

Faraday knew what it was she would confront, but her prior knowledge did not comfort her at all within

the reality of her vision.

She was trapped, as she had always been trapped (time after time after time). She had trusted

— the trees this time — and they had turned their backs on her and left her to this.

A thicket of thorns.

Bands of thornbush enveloped her, pressing into the white flesh of arm and breast and belly

and creeping between her legs and binding her to their own cruel purpose.

Thorns studded her throat and cheek so that whenever she breathed, blood spurted and the

thorns dug deeper.

Must I always bleed, she thought, and must I always suffer the despair of entrapment?

“It’s a bitch of a job,” muttered a thorn close to her ear, “but someone’s got to do it.”

Yes, yes, Faraday thought, someone has got to do it. She had been so sure that she’d not

succumb to the temptation of sacrifice any more, but here she was, embracing it again.

Someone would surely have to die if Tencendor was to be saved, and Faraday supposed she’d

have to do it all over again.

Painfully.

Trapped, trapped by the land. Trapped by its need to live at her expense.

The thorns twisted and roped, and Faraday screamed.

It seemed the right thing to do, somehow.

“You have a choice,” said the thorns. “You can succumb and the pain will end … reasonably

fast. Or you can fight and tear yourself apart in the effort to free yourself. Which will it be?”

“I. . . I . . . ”

“Quick! The decision cannot take forever, you know!”

“I. . . . ”

“Quick! Quick! Time is running out!”